Monday, October 17, 2005

Very Brief Post + Quote: Fran Ross

I was all set to write about how I'd done my part in conserving gas by not driving for the last three days, but then I went out to my car this afternoon, and someone had smashed in the back passenger vent window to steal...quarters! Yes, that's all that was missing. Quarters. The radio and CD player, a wireless transmitter, a AC/DC converter, a toolkit, Dentyne Ice, my insurance card all lay strewn across the front seat, along a coin compartment where I'd stored the quarters. Was it a kid or a crackhead? Not taking the radio, they must really have needed to do laundry or get a fix. And I'd just walked past my car yesterday afternoon and smiled because it was sitting so tranquilly, having burned no high-priced gas in three days....

***

She was once inadvertently in the state of hwip-as when she was riding in her uncle's car. A man standing on a corner as the car passed had seen her and had made sucking noises to denote his approval of her apperance. Oreo did not consciously know she had heard these primitive sounds, but as she was getting out of the car, she was in such an advanced state of hwip-as that when she yanked at the ashtray, mistakenly thinking it was a door handle, she heedlessly created for her uncle the only three-door club coupe in America.
--Fran Ross, Oreo (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1974), p. 55.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, SWSAS, it definitely does.... Thanks for dropping by!

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  2. so sorry. from my experience -- i once had the same car (window) broken into 8 times, with nothing ever stolen but loose change -- i'd say it's probably someone looking for a fix. desperate times . . .

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  3. Mendi, thanks for commiserating. I put a note saying there were no coins, no quarters, no dollars, in English and Spanish on the seat, so I hope that works. And I did actually go out this evening to check on the car....

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